In Coushatta, La., a white school-bus driver assigned nine black children to share just two seats on a school bus, while all of the white children sat comfortably in the rest of the seats.
Wait, did you get that? There were nine children in two seats. And as if that's not bad enough, the two seats allotted for the nine black children were in the back of the bus.
Some black children even had to stand, while some white children had their own seats.
No, this isn't a news story from the 1950s. This happened just last week.
Outrageous, right?
Many ideas are floating around as to why this incident might have happened. According to the school district, the bus driver made up her own seating chart for the children, and chose to place the nine black children in the two seats in the very back of the bus.
Fortunately, the driver has been suspended, pending a school board meeting.
Many people want to know if perhaps the black children were causing trouble or being loud, and therefore were seated in the back of the bus to avoid disturbing the bus driver.
Blame it on the children, right?
For a second, let's assume that this was, in fact, the situation. (Although I highly doubt it.)
Wouldn't the driver want to have them where she could see them? Why not put them in the front? This seems like racism to me.
Has this bus driver never heard of Rosa Parks? Did she not understand that placing all of the black children in the back of the bus is blatant racial segregation?
And to force all nine children to share two seats--isn't that a safety hazard as well?
No amount of speculation is going to erase the facts that are before us.
You would think that in the year 2006, we would no longer have to worry about racism being such a concern.
You would think that segregation on public transportation would be a nonissue. But sadly, it seems the problem still exists.
Maybe it's just me and my own naivete, but I really just can't get over the fact that racist people like this bus driver still exist and function in society.
I, like many others, want to believe that racism doesn't exist anymore, especially not to this extent.
But sadly, racism happens everywhere, every day to every group of people, in one way or another. Many of us live in a bubble where we might not get to see racism rear its ugly head all the time.
Maybe a lot of us are blind to it. Or maybe we just don't want to see it.
What upsets me is not just what happened on that bus, but that we haven't heard from of any of the white children on their way to school.
Did any of them stand up and say, "Why are the black children sitting back there by themselves?"
I understand the intimidation of authority on children, so more importantly, did any of the white children think that what was happening was wrong?
Certainly the children have all heard of racial struggles, discrimination, segregation, Black history, the story of Rosa Parks and so on.
Or maybe they haven't. How many of the white children told their teachers or parents what happened? How many of the parents called the school and reported it? How many of the teachers told the principal?
As far as I have heard: zero. In fact, the complaints from the black children's parents were not even immediately addressed.
What kind of message is this sending to the children?
Some of us would go as far as to say that we should never even think about race. Why make it an issue? How much should we actually think about it? Is not thinking about race at all progress?
Maybe that bus driver should have thought a bit more about race. Maybe if she had, she'd have realized that segregation is wrong and she wouldn't be in her current situation.
On the other hand, maybe she was thinking too much about race, and it was her full intention to segregate the students because she believes that the black children belonged in the back of the bus.
In either case, she deserves any punishment that the authorities deem adequate.
Whatever her intentions may have been, she acted in a blatantly racist manner.
I only hope that people will learn from her actions.
Megan Wadding is a junior in film studies. You can reach her at Megan.Wadding@asu.edu
